On a whim, Zita, Charlotte, and I decided to book a daytrip to Montenegro, Croatia’s neighboring country.
The trip we booked through TIC Dubrovnik left the Pile Gate at 7:20am, took us across the border into Montenegro on a bus, and drove us to three separate cities, two along the Bay of Kotor coastline and one further south. Unfortunately, Zita wasn’t feeling well on Friday, so Charlotte and I set off by ourselves.
Herceg Novi was our first stop upon crossing the border. Here, we stopped to use the toilet and grab coffee before continuing on our way into our first city, Perast (the star with no label).
There were also two islands in the middle of the bay. We hopped on a boat and went to one.
The legend of Our Lady of the Rocks began when two fishermen on a boat in the middle of the bay found a painting of a woman perched upon a rock. They took it inland and showed everyone. They went back out and found the same painting on the same rock. The villagers took this as a sign and decided to create an artificial island in her honor. However, they didn’t know how to create an artificial island. So they sunk 100 boats to create a base down to the seabed.
St. George is closed to the general public but has a graveyard on it that is tended to regularly.
At this point, we got back on the bus and drove around the bay some more until we arrived at Kotor.
Kotor had an unofficial mascot: freaking fracking cats. Everywhere. So many cats. Blech! We walked around the city for a few minutes before deciding we were going to hike the mountain to check out the view.
At that point, we hurried down the mountain to make it back to our bus. I did, however, turn around to get a few quick photos from the bottom of the mountain looking up.
We hopped back on the bus to go to our final stop of the day, Budva (yet another city surrounded on all sides by tall stone walls).
In each of the shops we walked into, we kept seeing this graceful figure of a dancer and we were determined to figure out why it was so prevalent in Budva souvenir shops. Well, we found her!
I nearly died trying to get this picture…but I don’t even care.
Lastly, Charlotte and I simply HAD to get closer to the water. We wandered onto a beach and, when no one was looking (hah! let’s be realistic, everyone was looking), we jumped over the water and scurried onto a jetty that, in hindsight, we probably were not supposed to be on.
Rounding out our trip, we hopped back on the bus and made our way slowly but surely back to Croatia. On the way back, our tour guide gave us a fascinating insight into Croatian culture and politics that had me on the edge of my seat nearly the entire way back.
Honestly, in my entire trip (London, Paris, Dubrovnik), my day-trip to Montenegro was probably my favorite part. If you get the chance, make the trip.
